A Song Of Flame And Ashes
by Sky Samuelle
Summary: Post Series/ Season8 : Bran keeps many secrets, Jon is beyond the wall, haunted by remorse and regret and quite a few realizations, Daenerys returns to life, just to battle the shadows of her mind in the temple of the Lord Of Light. A child await to be born and shoulder his heavy destiny. Jonerys story.
1. Chapter 1: The Raven King

**CHAPTER 1- The Raven King**

" Did you look for Drogon ? I was just thinking it would not a bad idea if you could push him back toward Valyria, or somewhere just as desolate. Nothing like rebuilding the city to remind you of the damage he might still do without his mother to direct him and there's always the risk he might take up hunting humans again..."

Tyrion shudders at the idea, although his expression reflects the relaxed giddiness it always holds when he managed to have a good cup or two before even touching his breakfast.

Five years from now, his habits will kill him, and Bran will need a new hand. It will be someone from the Vale, a Royce, a rough but competent man who will have very little patience for Bronn's lack of skill with coins.

Bran's lips twitch in a barely there smile.

" That won't be an issue. I saw Drogon won't come to Westeros again ".

And that's the truth. Just not all of it.

" That's a relief" Sam pipes in, and relieves his King from the burden of changing subject, carrying news from the citadel about issues Bran already knows, a plague breaking out in the reach and the study of vaccines going on for weeks without apparent result.

Bran's attention drifts away because he already saw how this story ends too, in another couple of weeks.

This is his life now, being a spectator to lives he can barely touch, preparing and waiting for the day to pass his burden to his heir, the way the previous Three-eyed Raven passed it to him.

There are days he thinks a stronger man would have not crumbled away under the weight, and there are days he simply thinks he was too young when he received it, his character not formed enough to allow him to retain desires or goals of his own.

Seeing has instead consumed everything he was or could be . His mind seems always to be struggling to not get lost in following the threads between past and future.

It is not always ugly tough, what he : there's still such a beauty to the world, even in the mids of chaos and violence, and such a perfect geometry in the way events connect , forming patterns of meaning , he feels often like the hands of Old Gods are always weaving at the expense of the unaware mankind.

The thing he is sorry about - in any capacity he is able to be sorry now- is that the role of witness he is the only one he seems able to perform.

A different man might have stepped in, when Theon offered to guard him, that terrible night the world almost ended except for the fact it was not meant to, but in all other pathways they could thread, Arya did not make it in time, for a thousand small intricacies of combinations of coincidences. Any other man to guard Bran Stark that night, and all was lost.

So, after looking, Bran Stark retreated behind a mask of apathy, tuned out any inkling of remorse, and let fate play out.

Let Theon die, so everyone else could live.

But he made sure to give that one thing that Theon had craved and thought he would never attain, the one thing Theon was looking for : absolution.

Much the same way, he could have stopped Daenerys Targaryen 's path to madness so easily, a thousand different ways.

He might have just told her that when Viserion died, her fate had been unmade with the unraveling of the curse on her womb ( only life can pay for death, only death can pay for life),that the child she and Jon had conceived under that waterfall, under the joined blessing of the old gods and the lord of the light, had the potential to someday become the next three eyed raven and so much more.

If he had done that, Daenerys and Jon would have married in the godswood, despite Sansa's misgivings. They would have had a few months of happiness, as the plan to starve the capital took much longer than it was foreseen. Sansa and Arya would come around the idea of a new family member.

But Daenerys would have died in childbirth and Jon in battle little after, leaving their little boy to be raised a puppet king under the guidance of Varys and Tyrion, Sansa a distant guardian.

King's Landing would still be near decimated by the common people killing each other for the little food available, in being beaten to death in riots and in the increasingly violent repression Cersei had decided upon to keep potential rebellions from occurring.

So Bran stood back, with little doubt.

He could still have told Jon to stand closer to his queen, but Jon, too confused about his feelings and what the reveal of his birth meant to him , would have just made even more a mess of the situation.

He could have refused to tell his sisters the secret of Jon's origins and counsel him to stay silent too, but at point a curious Arya would stop to nothing but eventually hound the secret from Sam.

If Bran had acted to keep Sam silent, Sam still would break his promise, too resentful of Daenerys to not press the issue at a later time, venting to Sansa.

In all pathways, Tyrion and Varys turned on the Dragon Queen. In some of them, the poisoning attempt occurred before and the child was lost, spurring Daenerys on a path to vengeance, fire and blood on King's Landing.

At last, at least, Bran could have acted to avoid Missandei of Naath to be taken, ensuring Grey Worm would stay lucid during the conquest of the southern capital.

In a world where that young woman lived, Tyrion would still turn his trying to prevent the execution of his siblings and managing only to cause his own as well.

Daenerys and Jon would have married in that future too, given a sister to their Daeron within a couple of years, and that Targaryen restoration would have brought the realization that is not possible to break the wheel.  
The constant effort of cutting away treasonous plots and ridding away the realm of its corruption would have turned the idealism of Jon and Daenerys in an uncompromising rulership, and Daeron would have grown in a perfectly ordinary prince.

Bran could have liked to live in that world, where he was only the brother to Sansa's Lady Of Winterfell.

The question of whether he should have caused that world to exist still plagues him, if he is to be honest with himself.

But he had also seen Drogon melting the Iron Throne, and taking the still warm corpse of his mother away. He had seen the priestess Kinvara, gazing in the flames weeks before that, receiving visions of a great fire that would end an era and set beginning to another, visions of the Uburnt guarded in death by her furious beast of a son, seemingly determined to starve himself out in grief.

A resurrection, the birth of a boy touched by the magic of flame and shadow when he was still in the womb, carrying the blood of wargs and dragon lords, a boy that like his mother would bring magic back to the world, only on a much larger scale.

Daenerys, spending the whole pregnancy and nearly the year after sheltered in a temple, battling a deep depression and the shadows of her mind, before reclaiming herself, in both her best and her worst, becoming whole. Rising once more Queen Of Dragon's Bay, uniting the cities under the second sons and her red god Faith, renouncing the name of her forefathers to create hers.

Opening the path her boy would someday thread.

Bran had known then he was not meant to change anything. He had felt it was almost unnatural, to prevent the events that would lead to the creation of the man meant to relieve him of his burden.

One day, Daeron will come for him, knowing more of magic Bran had when he had taken his place as Three Eyed Raven, and will accomplish great things with that gift.

He will never sit on any throne that is not Essosi, because the six kingdoms will set to secede after Bran's rule turns to its epilogue.

Everything will be well, only not for Jon, who will never know just how much he lost.

And maybe not telling him is the kindest thing he ever could do for his brother, but the doubt always hovers on the edge of his mind.

For the realm Daenerys Targaryen has to stay dead. Any interfering in her path in the next few years might compromise the final result in any part- her hard won sanity, Daeron's life, her survival to the trials before her. It is a delicate balance.

Jon, who twice ended up causing the death of a woman he loved for duty, who left the wall to join the free folk, tormented by the idea he became all Ned Stark most despised ( queen slayer and kinslayer and oathbreaker), who now sees he has done to Daenerys what his brothers did to him, is an element too volatile to add to the life of a woman who now equally loves and hates him.

At least for now.

Bran can't quite quell the hope that someday a pathway will open, and maybe he will be able to tell his brother what he knows without compromising the future.

He will keep looking for a path to an happier future and in the meantime... he will try, at the best of his abilities, to watch out for all of them.

—-


	2. Chapter 2: The Vagabond Crow

Chapter 2: The Vagabond Crow

Summary: Jon Snow is living beyond the wall, but the ghosts of his past keep haunting him.

Beyond the Wall, Jon Snow's dreams are plagued by nightmares. Most often he dreams of the only real father he has ever known, Ned Stark, grim faced and silent, standing just out of his reach, eyes full of judgment.

_Queen-Slayer, Kin-Slayer, Oath-Breaker. There's one thing left I taught you as father, that you have not betrayed?_

That accusing gaze seems to say, and it leaves him always defenseless, flayed alive by the truth he will try to forget in daytime hours.

He awakes always sweaty, guilty, angry, a cloak of anguish settling above him as Ghost howls somewhere outside and far away.

And he will feel like screaming too, most often, because all he never wanted it was being a Stark, a true born one, and his father was the man he looked up, whole his life, so he cannot explain to himself how he got to this point.

Once, when Jaimie Lannister first came to Winterfell with King Robert's party, it had been easy for him and Robb to despise him, because their father made it very clear what he thought of men who turned their cloak on their king. Some things were sacred, and while it was bad enough that the Lannister man had done that while wearing the white cloak of one who was sworn to serve and protect, the true abomination, in the old gods' eyes, it was to assassinate your legitimate sovrereign, hiding your true intent like a serpent until you struck in betrayal.

Jon Snow had them wholeheartedly agreed with his father's assessment of the situation.

It truly seemed like an impossible thing that years after, he would be committing the same crime.

_How did I ever become this? A man who slays his queen while he looks into her eyes, full of trust and love, and swears words that make a mockery of his fealty_?

When he thinks of that, he gets angry with himself all over again, the fury burning hotter and wilder with each time the memory stirs awake in his mind.

He does not understand it at all if he looks behind, because it seems so obvious it was wrong and utterly dishonorable under every aspect.

He knows he was angry with her that day, trying hard to separate in his mind the queen from the woman. He had felt personally betrayed by the slaughter of so many innocents, because he had believed in her, her goodness and her vision, and last couple of weeks he could barely recognize in that feverish shell the strong, capable leader he had met in Dragonstone.

He had wondered if she had deceived him, or if, more likely, the battle of Winterfell had left her damaged- he knew there were men that did not return quite right from battle, hyper vigilant and exceedingly aggressive or fearful.

He had not known how to reach out and fix her , not when he was still firmly entangled in that fierce rejection of being a Targaryen. One moment he felt like he wanted her in arms so strongly he could not breathe, and by the next moment he would remember she was his aunt and keeping it in the family it was such a Targaryen thing he just... could not have that, inside him.

He had allowed Tyrion's words to settle like a spell over him, that day- a man who, like him, was in love with her and felt how wrong all of what had happened was, saying things he feared to be true, things that felt like a punch in the gut. Arya's harsh judgment of Daenerys too, had held its weight, when he was already so uncertain, full of horror.

Then he had been to see *her*, half hoping she would contradict everything he felt with some greater truth, or a glimpse of the woman he thought he had known.

But Daenerys was been as unrecognizable as ever, soft and ethereal but eeringly at peace among the ashes, at home in the carnage, speaking of a future that frightened him exactly because he thought, for a moment, he could be fine with that vision she painted, if it meant he could have her.

So he had ... murdered her. He had assassinated his queen.

The enormity of his crime had nearly suffocated him as soon he saw the realization dawning in her eyes, felt her body folding like a too fragile thing in his embrace.

He had felt at once horrible, despicable, and when Drogon had come, his anger and his grief ready to destroy everything in his path, Jon had not moved out of his way.

Kill me- he had thought- it is your right. I deserve it.

But Drogon had just looked at him with his terrible spite and poured his rage elsewhere. Most likely more out of defiance and hatred than any respect of the blood in his veins ( Jon had always had this feeling around the dragons, that while Rhaegal regarded him with some curiosity, Drogon had a keen interest in intimidating him, simply because he was not allowed to eat him at once).

Afterwards, he had left Tyrion lull him again in the illusion that what he had done was a necessary thing evil, a deed that had saved the realm from many wars to come.

As if it was enough of a excuse, to murder your queen because you no longer shared her agenda.

Now with months to stew over all had happened, far away from everything and everyone, all Jon sees is how easily he had allowed himself to be swayed.

Surely he could have given Daenerys time to show her true colors, or himself more chances to sway her away from her dreams of conquest. There was good in her still. He could have tried at least to appeal to that.

He could have tried to stay true to his oaths longer.

He could have tried to depose her upfront.

Instead, he had picked the dishonorable way.

He had picked murder, and he had allowed himself to dance like puppet on the strings of a man Daenerys had pretty much every right to execute, conveniently just in time to allow him to get away with his treachery while condemning him for his.

Maybe Daenerys was not the only one to go insane those days.

Jon Snow is ready to admit he had acted the fool.

He still tries to tell himself Daenerys was far too gone to be reasoned with, that he saved lives at the price of his heart and his honor both.

But then his mind returns to Tyrion's expression in their last meeting, like the man had not spoken of madness or of a woman they could have spared or mourned, but of a Westeros that could maybe be better if free of her shadow.

He feels ... used, dirty.

And while he can't defend what Daenerys has done to Kings Landing, he thinks of all kings that came before her, Robert included, that razed cities to the ground even after the enemy' surrender to prove a point, at times, and that were not held to any high standards simply because they had vowed nothing different.

He wonders if Daenerys could not have healed, if she was given more time, more trust, and a chance to think her survival did not hinge solely on her ability to wield terror and destruction as weapons.

He will never know, and that, he finds, it is the most distressing thing of all.


	3. Chapter 3: A Little Man

**Author Note : **A special thank you to everyone following, favoriting and reviewing this story.

**Chapter 3: A Little Man**

It has taken Bronn exactly one year to lose Highgarden.

Tyrion wishes with all of himself he could say he did not expect that, but honestly when the marriage negotiations between Bronn and the Redwyne girl that was picked for him failed to come to anything solid, he had suspected they were being strung along.

With good reason - Bronn, for all his streetsmart cunning, was the least likely candidate to win the alliance of the sophisticated, politically savy noble families of the Reach. He was given his role in the king council because he held the most prosperous region of the realm, in an attempt to give the reach lords a reason to support him, but his lack of experience had played against him. Having never kept a large keep, or received a formal education, he had been unable to administer the region without delegating most of his tasks to loyal men that had, apparently, been in the pocket of Willas Tyrell.

Tyrion had expected problems but had not counted, maybe stupidly, on the less flashy grandson of Olenna Tyrell - the man had basically vanished after his sister death and had been assumed his worsening health had made unable of anything but hiding among his Hightower relations.

Instead, Willas had proved a surprisingly capable player- he had kept a low profile and feigned acceptance of his lost status right up the point the rebellion had been perfectly organized. High Garden had suddenly closed its borders and declared its indipendence under the Tyrell banner.

Bran The Broken had just replied back with a raven his acceptance of their choice, announced his council that it was better this way for all the parties involved and assigned Bronn a new land in the Crownlands.

The King had also assured them that with the Reach receding, the unrest that had ran through their lands after Sansa Stark' careless move to bid for indipendence in the very same council that made her brother king would come to close.

At first many lords and ladies had not taken well the news they were to accept a sovereign from a now entirely separate country. Only the strain the previous years of war had put on everyone's coffers and Bran's near omniscience had inspired a wary, frightened sort of compliance.

The Greyjoy woman had at least had the common sense to wait until the council was over before taking Bran aside and stating that, if his North broke away, so it was right for the Iron Islands as well, particularly as she had declared for Daenerys and not a Stark.

Bran had granted her freedom, and Tyrion had felt sure that with the Vale and Riverlands so closely related to new sovereign, and he and Bronn keeping richest regions, the remaining discontent would die to nothing .

Instead now the crown holds one kingdom less.

Still, they were trying for a new way of living, and his claim on the Westerlands, despite his poor reputation, went unchallenged. Probably because the cousin he had appointed as his heir had a good sway on the lords of the West, and he made as few visits as possible to Casterly Rock, preferring to forget the altogether.

Tyrion sighs, rubs his tired eyes, and drinks. And drinks.

Tries to still his mind and focus on the little skirmishes between the Iron Islands and The North.

One condition for the Island indipendence had been for them to not reave the remaining kingdoms realms and find other sources of living.

The Iroborn, whose land is rocky and hostile to all but few species of fruit trees and cabbages, had taken to partially substitute piracy with hunting seals and whales to strike up commerce and crafting - that put them in competition with the North for sources, particularly as the nothern seas nowadays were an area of dubious jurisdiction.

Not that the Greyjoy queen cared about details like that.

Fortunately that is no concern of his, because he can't imagine anything more fastidious than trying to ...

It strikes him suddenly the thought that once he would have loved the challenge of mediate that conflict.  
Once, that he would have not thought of it as a chore.

When had Tyrion Lannister, hand to three monarchs, became someone who hated politics?

Mind you his position is a joke , a token - there is no need for wits and council when your king already knows everything about everything. It is merely expected from him to keep up the appeareances and being a contact between the nobles and the crown, but there's never any doubt about what should be done and how.

And that is good, is not?

Even if nobody knows if Bran truly feels much of anything.

Is not better a king who wants too little than a queen who wants too much?

" Ask me in ten years"

He told Jon Snow right after... what they had done.

He thought then the answer would be clear far earlier, that time would have pat him on the back, erase any uncertainty.

He had felt such a bitterness and self loathing then , at Jaimie's death.

The resentment toward Daenerys had not been a new thing, more like a silent current that been simmering inside him since the night he had seen Jon Snow exiting her rooms.  
He had truly believed for a time he was going to be a better men serving her.

Had set aside the whoring and the self pity to be dedicated to her cause completely, imagined a bright future with her at the center, the best ruler Westeros had known, and he the power behind the throne, his pragmatic cynicism a perfect counter to her savage idealism.

He had not ever dreamed she might return his feelings or even welcome him to her bed.  
His fantasies had not carried him that far.  
What he had asked of life had been just to see her to succeed, to be her partner in the ways that truly mattered.  
He had imagined her, married to a consort that would be a mere figurehead, while they took all decisions for the betterment of the realm together.

He had imagined tempering her fire with his reason, cherishing her trust like she was a goddess incarnate.

Then Jon Snow strolled in, took her heart, her body, her trust ... and that place he had dared to imagine for himself.

All what was left afterwards was his growing fear to be put aside, left with no future nowhere in the face of his failures in her eyes and the bridges he had already burned.

When Sansa Stark had thrown him a lifeline, he had caught it.

Speaking to Varys, he had half hoped the other man would come to the conclusion that getting rid of Jon quietly was the best solution. He had planned to protest a little, and let the Spider work his magic without his needing to get his hands dirty.

He had been surprised to see how fast Varys had turned around, moving in the opposite direction... and he had had to warn Daenerys, step in before she could truly come to harm.

And because he had saved her, she had the chance to ignore his plea, burn King's Landing to the ground, cause the destruction that had claimed Jaimie 's death.

She had made him the reason of Jaimie's death and then sidelined him, that's what he had thought while she was giving her grand speech to her armies, when he had given her back his pin.

He had figured out he was going to die for that, given the mood she was in, but then Jon Snow, in all his smoldering righteousness had visited him, and he had seen a chance.

It is twisted, that even now, he feels a twinge of satisfaction at the idea.

The woman he had wanted, killed by his words, through a man she had chosen above him.

Maybe he truly is the perverted monkey his father always swore he was.

Ask me in ten years, huh?

If she had given him the time of the day, he would have done a lot better than allowing another man to tell him what to think of her.

If she had wanted him, or at least acknowledged him, he would have not celebrated her greatest accomplishment with a blade in her heart.

He could have forgiven, for the greatness that he knew existed in Daenerys Targaryen, the ruin of his family.  
Had he not already given Jaimie up, in many ways, when he had pledged himself?  
And Jaimie would have understood, because *he* did everything for Cersei, and he knew Tyrion, deep down, had always wanted to be just like his big brother.

What had Jon Snow given up instead?  
He could not even bother himself to make his queen welcome in his own home.

Could not hold her as she grieved, or bring himself to marry her when the perfect excuse of an unified claim popped up.

Insulting, truly, to think she had trusted him far above her hand.

Maybe Daenerys deserved her end after all, for burning the city he loved to hate, and all the miserable people in it, who had loved to jeer at the high born while wallowing in their dirt.

Just... at times when he looks back, remembers all what was accomplished in Essos, it seems a bit disappointing.

That little men get to cast shadows large enough to darken a star.

That those big dreams she sold him will never be reality.

That he never will be anything better than what he is.

Ask me in ten years?

They are just other words to haunt him.

Just like Daenerys ' face, like Shae's, like Tysha's.

Here, he just made himself sad again.

Who does need more wine?


	4. Chapter 4: A Wolf At Sea

What is West of Westeros?

It turns it is something vaster that mere sea- six months of a first journey discover nothing but more water, but Arya Stark was never one to be easily deterred by hardship.

She came back empty handed at Westeros ' shores the first four times- her ship testing how far they could go without incurring in food shortage, mapping the skies... putting at rest a couple of mutinies, avoiding one spectacularly vicious sea storm.

She learned that with too much time far away from land makes men become different - some downright crazy- that open sea elicits a special brand of fear, both when the weather is so still the ship is struck, and when it is so violent you are nearly sure you are going to die on the bottom of sea.

She learned that leading a ship, especially if you are a woman, is very much about keeping your head when others are losing it around you, and forcing them to keep themselves in check.

She learned that the sea is a stranger, giving nothing away, and that it makes her to feel at once powerfully alive and as powerfully close to her god as she was in the House Of Black and White.

The vast blue depths are both life and death.

What is West Of Westeros?

She finds out at the end of the fifth journey : a smattering of islands with a strange, dry but windy climate, sandy and rocky soil that gives nourishment to trees that grow twisted to not oppose the powerful, constantly hissing winds.

There are plants she has never known- some of them prove poisonous to the sailors that try to eat the fruits or touch the flowers.

What strikes her the most is the animals: a species of small sized, blue feathered falcons, pink birds that dwell near lakes with very funny nearly squared beaks, small monkeys that eat insects and move by night.

There's people too, living there, their skin black as coal and their eyes pale blue or green, their hair always frizzy and various shades of brown, dwelling in cities not too different from the ones she left behind.

The language barrier and the hostility of natives are probably an obstacle she would have not lived to get past if she had not stolen a couple of faces and warged in a couple of birds to get a lay of the land.

She tries to establish a ground for future trading with one the local kings, but she meets a lot of resistance in convincing them Westeros is not going to move to invade them, now they are going to be on their maps.

Because it scares her that she can't promise them that, can't promise that Essosi slavers won't target them too, she tries even harder to offer the protection of a formal alliance with Bran.

She feels like a fraud for it - the culture here is very different... each island is fractured in several indipendent states all allied through marriage, but all regions observe a nearly complete gender equality - women don't simply fight or inherit land here, but they are considered eligible to the same employment as men. Some states do allow the smallfolk to partake in 'temporary ' marriages with the one purpose of begetting children - lasting by contract from one year to ten.

Some families consider the woman as the head of the family, and not the man. Religious practices center around poisoning the initiates into ecstasy and trances.

Westeros would not enjoy the islands and the islanders would most likely not like Westeros.

Still, Arya tries to speak her piece while she weights her options, tries until she and her crew are 'taken in custody' by local government. The kings decided to eliminate the problem simply not allowing the newcomers to leave. Ever.

They are imprisoned for months, and five of her men die in cells, struck by a 'red fever' native children apparently experience often with no issue.

Arya thinks of biding her time, stealing a face, stealing back her ship.

*They* know what she can do tough- they found her faces in the cabin, and now deem her a special brand of criminal, guilty of killing three of their own ( no matter if they attacked her first).

She has chains with heavy iron balls to both her wrists and ankles, and they never lower their guard around her.

But she does not give up.

Even through the rage and the sadness and the isolation of her cell, she waits for an opportunity.

She has nothing but time.

Her mind wanders back, to Bran, to Sansa, to Jon.

It's against her better judgement she hopes someone might come looking for her.

There are no weirdwoods here, no eyes for Bran to see through.

He did not know what was west of Westeros neither.

He or Sansa might send ships after hers but perhaps not if they think her ship sank.

Would have Bran let her go if he had known she was not to return?

Certainly not, she wants to believe.

Yet he did let Theon die protecting him, even knowing from the beginning she was meant to slay the Night King - she is last to complain about Theon dying, but she does not understand why he did not hint the other man to just bide his time and slow down the ice creature. It might have worked out even better.

He also had allowed Jon to march straight to his doom, but that was also a point Arya did not feel free of debating.

She was guilty too, of encouraging Jon in that particular direction, even if she had not wholly believed how much she would have succeeded.

She remembers at the beginning, when Jon came to Winterfell with dragons, a foreign queen and an army of warriors unlike any other.

She had snuck among the common folk, content in that childlike surety her favorite brother would have looked among thousand faces and recognized *her*, grown up but still Arya Underfoot somewhere inside.

She had actually been stupidly disappointed when his horse went past her, and he turned to look at the Dragon Queen instead, leaning in to tell her something that made her to smile far too wide.

From that moment onwards, Arya Stark had felt definitely ill- disposed to like Daenerys Targaryen, although she would not admit it until much after.

Jon would just make it worse in the following days, split as he seemed to be between avoiding the other woman and staring after her with a look halfway between a longing and remorse every time she was not looking back to him.

Arya had been ... tired and homesick and half- bitter that Winterfell no longer felt like home. The pack was together at last, but nothing was going as it was supposed to. Sansa still had the mean streak of when they were younger, but her romanticism had soured into a chilly, biting diffidence. She was ... still Sansa, but she held other people at distance, in a way that suggested that her mind was constantly playing a game where she alone could be the victor. It was sadly evident her time with the Lannister's had left a lasting imprint.

And the more Arya stood by her, the more she felt her inner Lannister emerging too - where else could have come from, that attitude that everyone but them was the enemy?

Bran was the worst tough- he did not even consider himself Bran Stark when she first met him, and only gods knew if he even considered them his sisters.

Arya had figured that she would feel more like her old self when Jon came back, but despite their heartfelt reunion she had felt distant from him too.

She had felt adrift, disconnected from that childhood she held on in memory with all of her, when she was in Bravos. Like she wanted to chase something whose name did not know.

The one time that sensation had left her had been her time with Gendry.

Maybe because he had known different parts of her, maybe because he did not expect anything but her to be herself, maybe because he was soft and gentle in all ways she was not without being weak.

She was glad he had settled up fine without her in the end - he had married the daughter of one of his bannermen, and last time she had checked on him, he had looked well, an affectionate husband and father, decently handling his lordly matters.

He was well liked, and he had the family he always wanted.

Thinking he was safe and well left her always with a bittersweet feeling.

He could not be the last man she took to bed, but he was the one she could have settled, if she had felt ever remotely inclined to be a wife and a mother. He was the sort of man who would nnot have minded her ways and she could have loved him.

She had never found the words to tell him she came back to Winterfell wrong too - her pack was fractured from the inside and she felt restless, caged, like she wanted just to roam free, fly away somewhere nobody knew her, where she could be anyone and the past was only a shadow.

She had nothing to give to Gendry or anyone else anymore, outside a fistful of moments.

She had become the lone wolf that always survived but always wandered too, at the edge of other packs' territories.

Well, this time she had wandered too far.

Jon...

Maybe if she snuck her way out of this one, she would go to the Wall and apologize.

For what exactly? For trying to turn him against Daenerys Targaryen?

Her judgment of the woman had been proved right, for the most.

But probably a good sister should not have felt like she had to make her brother choose between two sides of her family. Possibly she should have felt guilty or ashamed because even before that she had stood by Sansa in trying to convince him to renege on his oath of fealty once they had finished exploiting the Dragon Queen armies.

That had been dishonorable and dishonest behavior in itself... it had been a very not Stark thing to think or suggest at war, above everything else, a thing that went against all Ned And Catelyn Stark had tried to instill in their children growing up.

Arya did not want to think she went along with it only because she had felt like she had to press Jon to remember he was on *their* side. She did not want to think she had helped to ruin Jon's life only because she had felt petty and insecure.


	5. Chapter 5: A Queen In Winter

Sansa visits the crypts exactly once a week, just like she remembers her lord father used to.

She leaves flowers at the feet of his statue, to Rickon's grave, to the spots the statues of her mother and brother Robb she commissioned will occupy soon.

She sits for awhile with the memories of her childhood, with the rage for the bodies that were defiled and unreturned, with the sadness for a pack that dwindled and dwindled until she was all what was left.

She likes the idea someday she might sit there and not be sad, and she will have long silent conversations with her dead about everything they are missing.

It's the romantic in her, stirring for a last breath of life. The coldness that lives in her bones cringes at the vulnerable sentimentality of the gesture and turns her away.

She never lingers too long.

She spends more time in the godswood, sitting in the grass by the spot Lady was buried, a large rock marking it.

She imagines Lady's soft fur under her fingertips, so well it is a nearly physical sensation, and makes believe they are both back to a time they were young and happy.

Lady was sweet and she was good and bound to the best part of Sansa's soul in a way she can't fully explain without sounding crazy, even to herself.

Sansa cant avoid believing that if she had lived...

But she did not, and Sansa is not so sweet nor so good anymore.

In that spent, vacant space Lady's ghost presence used to live like a cut off limb, something else grew, vicious and dark, angry and potent.

She felt it, although she had not recognized it for what it was, the day she fed Ramsay to his dogs.

She was so full of simmering, cold hatred that day, the fresh wound of Rickon's loss turning her to nothing but ice and poison.

She stood there and promised to erase every part of that man as the dogs circled him.

In her hatred, she had wanted to see his horrible face giving out under the angry fangs, had imagined it into such a detail and with such a fever that it was a little thing, that sensation of slipping, edges blurring until her anger became a bottomless hunger. And more.

It slipped into Grey Jeyne 's memory of being a puppy, wetting herself under the booth of her master, her ribs aching from the kicks she had already received. Of Red Jeyne's restless anguish to be left weak until she was released for the hunt, to be forced to run after her meat when her limbs and mind worked against her. Of Kyra's distrust at the touch of hands that could tease her but would smack hard over her sensitive ears if she nibbled at them in warning.

It slipped into Helicent's dismay to be often hit with a wood, and Willow's definite dislike for ... everything basically, and Jez's unfulfilled yearning for affection. Sara 's fear of two-legged creatures, twisting her submissive nature into anxious aggressivity.

Somehow her hatred became theirs and theirs became hers. They blended, a strange comfort blooming from minds entwining, a pack following and a wolf commanding.

Sansa felt for a moment strong and whole and avenged, wounded and healed, powerful and consoled, sad but strong.

She was the bitches and they were her, and she was tearing him to pieces with her theeth and he deserved it.

Later, she shook off the sensation like someone who comes awake from something half nightmare and half a dream.

She did not believe those wisps of images that ran through her mind as nothing more than fantasies.

But she refused to put down the dogs when it was suggested to her.

Instead she fed them herself, petted them when they took to welcome her with wagging tails and wet tongues that looked for her hands.

She spent warm words on their shiny clean coats of black fur and recovering health.

The bitches reminded her more of herself and Theon than of their previous master, so she was somehow satisfied of seeing them thriving after being mistreated for so long.

And maybe she liked to have someone to show affection to, on occasion, and if that sensation of slipping returned, a warmth kindled and shared, she thought little of it. After all, she had far bigger concerns.

It was only two nights after Jon left to assist the Dragon Queen in taking back King's Landing, she had a disturbing dream...

She dreamed of Willow's warm comfort in dozing off nestled between Jez and Sara, Grey Jeyne nibbling playfully on her ear.

Helicent sat apart from them, and wailed a sound thick with longing.

There was suddenly a nostalgia for open spaces cutting Sansa's chest in half, the yearning for a race... it All bled away into the eagerness for the coming hunt, the excitement for the prey, a vivid scent that eased the hunger twisting in her belly ... a woman, naked, and Helicent jumped onto her, half despair and half wild joy, ready to devour.

Sansa came awake suddenly, nausea and horror suffocating her.

She nearly threw up, and swore at once she would bring Helicent, if not the whole pack of monstrous hounds, to be put down. Better yet, she would give the order and never look upon the beasts again.

Only with that certainty in mind she could persuade herself to come back to sleep. Eventually.

In the morning light, naturally, her resolution had looked very silly, the response of a child to a night terror, of a little girl recoiling at a ugly reality she had failed to accept.

She resolved to let the dogs be and just avoid the kennels.

The bitches were used to her by then tough, and they missed her.

She dreamed of puppies wailing, crying, lonely.

She came awake every time with a sadness she had not known since her mother died, cleaving her chest.

She set it all aside.

Then, when they were preparing to leave for King's Landing, Bran, who apparently, truly saw everything, decided to enlighten her.

" You should repair the bond with your dogs before we go. You don't want to see them cagey enough to attack the kennel master while you are away."

And because Sansa hated not knowing everything, what followed was a very long conversation on warging, how it worked, bonding with specific animals, and how it was rather difficult even for an experienced warg to tamper with an animal whose mind was bonded very deeply to a specific person.

Sansa had been half horrified and half satisfied that she had possibly made the Bastard Girls to eat the Bolton Bastard, especially as it was more accident than design.

In light of Daenerys Targaryen bear leveling of a whole city through a dragon she controlled, mystical bonds looked especially dangerous.

But what was danger to one person, was power to another.

Sansa had learned to never waste an opportunity when it presented.

So she went straight to the kennels and allowed the bitches- even Helicent- to lick her face wet.

When she returned, without Bran, but with excellent news, she took care to apply the advice the received in training them better.

Now she always found the time of hunting with the nothern ladies of her court- and she took the dogs with her, spurring them to see as prey other sorts of animals. She allowed them to accompany her when she went out riding, feeling a wonderful sort of safety at the idea the massive hounds, now healthy and muscular, would quite efficiently rip to pieces any bandit who dared to threaten her.

It was liberating to know she was not entirely dependent on her guards for protection. That if ever another man dared to raise a hand to her, she could count on a seemingly docile pet to turn into something lethal.

She was teaching Sara to circle the feast table during banquets, playing at looking for scraps, while she instead aptly went to listen to conversation, Sansa's mind collecting useful bits and directing her.

Sara already knew to rest where the most gossiping among the servants happens.

It has proved a surprisingly useful source of information, even if it started as both a game and an exercise of focus.

Sara is affectionate and obedient, the most willing of the hounds to be taught new tricks - she likes the game of learning, and being useful to her mistress, and being able to demand to receive extensive cuddling and head scratching in recompense. Despite her size and pounds of all solid muscle she is still rather fearful of new people in the castle, and fear still makes her growly and ready to bite and rip. Sansa actively restrains her and guides her the most even because of that, but there's no denying she is her favorite. She even lets her sleeping in her rooms, when the air promises thunderstorms and Sara very deliberately goes to hide there before she can be brought back to the kennel for the night.

If Sara is the sweeter and trainable of her canine companions, Willow is the most willful and cruel.

She always leads during hunts and ill-bears being petted unless she is the right sort of mood. She is very frighteningly good to read human body language tough, and her sense of smell a constant wonder even for a dog. Sansa would never guess human emotions had a scent that lingered- fear especially.

Sansa keeps her close and vigilant when she is receiving petitioners, and allows her senses to entwine with Willow's - it is easier to understand what game is being played if you have the whole picture of who is speaking to you.

Helicent is curious and active, and she will not long for hunt as long as she is allowed to run after her mistress when she goes riding, or trail after her in court. Her curiousity means Sansa has usually a pretty clear picture of everything unusual that happens in her castle, to the point the servants think of The Queen In The North as some omniscient, intimidating creature.

Red Jeyne and Grey Jeyne are the largest and strongest of the pack, but they are surprisingly sociable now they are well cared for. They are the ones who accompany Sansa when she visits Wintertown or more distant locations, and their noses and ears catch every detail of their surroundings.

Jez has a terribly short attention span and will be mostly lay lazying about before the fireplace or in the yard unless she is directed otherwise, but Sansa loves her anyway.

They are not Lady, and Sansa will never be the woman she might have been if so much pain and loss had not touched her life, but those dogs still somehow gave her back something she thought she had lost.

Life is moving forward. It is not perfect , and it is still difficult that Arya decided to leave and Jon went to lose himself among the wildlings but... there's a flow to everything that makes her to feel like she can finally breathe.

The Ironborn are a problem that she will trying to resolve, and she has plans to improve the economy of her kingdom by mining timber and aiding the breeding of sheep.

She is pressing Bronn for more advantageous trading with the reach, and then... she promised her bannermen she will marry in two years' time and no less, because her first concern is stabilize the kingdom.

Of course she is merely biding time - she will need heirs, but she wants to be sure to pick a man whose character will reserve no surprises, and no attempts to usurp her authority.

Maybe a Mormont- she legitimized three bastards from a cadet branch of the family so the line won't die with lady Lyanna and one of them is likely to be a good candidate.

Men of Bear Island have good reasons to respect women in power.

And she would like a daughter with Lady Lyanna fierce spirit and the Starks' long face.

For all that she cannot say she is eager for the marriage bed, she finds the thought of her body someday swelling with life , ensuring her family won't die out, is one , if not happy, at least... nice.

She can never have back the innocence or the pack she lost, but other children will someday play and learn where she and her siblings used to. More Stark children will run across the severe halls of Winterfell, and life will be... good again.

The North is free.

And, finally, so is Sansa Stark.


	6. Death and Resurrection Of A Dragon

Everything comes and goes in waves, as the cool water laps at her body - that feels battered, broken, in need of that relief.

The pain that slays her is the memory of a blade that cuts into her and her eyes disbelieving as they looked up to the face of the one whose love she had all but begged.

It is the face of an almost sister, almost best friend, almost certainty right before she is to die in the same chains she swore she freezes ger forever.

It is the ghost feeling of her loyal bear falling, dead, and her cold hands grasping at him, desperate.

It is Rhaegal falling into the water and she unable to help him, unable to freeze out the realization the blame was entirely hers- the lack of sleep and food made her forgetful, unaware, capable to forget about the fucking Iron Fleet.

It is the thought of Viserion's sweetness gone from the world, forever, an ache that dug inside her chest as a constant punishment.

It is the feeling of a whole abyss opening up inside her as she sits alone, surrounded by a crowd that celebrates for and with everybody but her as she grieves. Whole a lifetime of wandering as a beggar from city to city and she had never felt as much as an outsider as she sat there, watching men congratulating another man for her successes, her advisors suddenly distant and incompetent, and that new fear spiking and blooming in her chest as *he* just smiled, half apology half embarrassment. She knew then things could go wrong very fast- one wrong word to the wrong person and she could go back to be the scared little girl running from hired knives.

The pain always drowned her, but then another wave soothed her, the forgetfullness taking hold of all she was. A scent of lemon blossoms, the elusive sense of warmth for a home she never found, and Daenerys Targaryen forgot who she was.

Peace consumed her senses, and she floated away from all the sorrow.

One moment she was a nameless child playing in the streets, right before a red door, two baby dragons of the size of cats gently crooning at her as they asked her attention, snouts brushing her bare feet.

One moment she laughed and laughed in pure bliss as she rode a grey horse in endless plains, feeling free and young and without a care in the world.

One moment she thought she could glimpse a castle ( just like Dragonstone but so full of white and full of light, and Dragonstone was ... she could not remember) and a woman inside there, who looked much like her, but older, waiting. Waiting for her.

The woman who was nameless felt pulled in all those directions at once, but oddly, she felt like she could be able to follow all those pulls, all those strings of peace, at the same moment, in the same breath, and be better for it.

Mended, Healed, Whole, instead of broken and splintered.

And there was not a child somewhere, dark hair and a dark haired father, in a tent, somewhere?

She almost followed, happy, that feeling of contentment and belonging to all its different sources.

Was it a matter of a moment, of falling backwards and escaping the pain, the torment of lying in the freezing water with grief devouring her?

Was it the secret in the letting go?

Something held her back.

A weight in her chest and the wailing, distant but broken hearted of a infant, pulling at her from a whole other direction.

Don't leave me, it seemed the wailing hammered into her head, and she wanted to weep and forget and be left alone.

Her peaceful dreaming crashed, a scent of flowers and greenery and heat enveloping her senses so completely it left her confused, bereft, lonely again.

There was solid ground under her, and light, overwhelming her sight right before it was filled with vibrant color.

Suddenly she was on a beach, trees and flowers framing a path at the edge of her vision, and so many butterflies swarmed over the pale sand, their wings glittering in the sun.

" It is not your time yet, Your Grace".

Dear Missandei stood in front of her, a child in her arms, eyes of a delicate lilac and the promise of the trademark Stark long face.

" I don't want him"

It was all she could say.

She did not want some brat who would grow up to look at her with the same suspicious accent of Sansa and Arya Stark.

She did not want a constant reminder that she was killed, unloved, betrayed.

Once, to be mother again was some impossible dream she would have cherished.

But to be mother like this tough - it felt like a corruption, a taint.

To even think she had died with Jon Snow child in her belly felt like a physical offense.

He had taken everything from her.

All she had ever had to build herself around was her name, her legacy as last Targaryen- he had torn into that hard worn history of her without even trying or caring, and stole it.

If she had forgiven him that, out of love, he certainly had proved he did not meant giving anything in return.

No love, no companionship, no family.

A Stark was all he wanted to be, and Stark men just had clumsy pity for their unwanted aunts.

She did not want his son.

She wanted back her peace, and he was already taking it away.

" He is yours tough, Your Grace, won't you take him?"

The child face scrunched up like he was to cry again, and he looked so miserable for the way he pressed his little lips together, like he was trying to hold all the anguish in the world in.

Just looking at him Daenerys Targaryen, First Of Her Name, Queen Of No Kingdom, felt remorseful and all more broken. But she felt also all the weight of her years of striving to get something that was never hers to have in first place.

She wanted to embrace Missandei and forget.

She wanted to take the child and tell him it did not matter anymore, because the sun was rising at East finally, and she was supposed to be free.

No more pain.

Could not she take Missandei and the new baby and go at the house with Red Door?

Maybe they could all rest there. Just a bit?

She was so tired, she felt like she could sleep a thousand years.

She wanted to go home somewhere, finally, but the baby made her to feel so sad, she felt like she was back to Winterfell, in that feasting hall where she had all the sorrow of the world frozen inside her.

And all she could think it was she had no home.

Nobody wanted her nowhere, nobody loved her or missed or needed her, and even this new child would surely hate her, like his aunts, or find her disgusting, like his father in those days before...

Why had she ever thought he would want to rule beside her?

He had made clear he did not want her.

He did not even share her vision for the world, he just wanted the war to be over so he could come back to the North.

But she had not wanted to leave him behind and with the throne of her ancestors finally in her hold, she had felt such a clarity of purpose, such a renewed sense of confidence that everything was possible.

She had thought of conquering Essos, ending slavery once for all in honor of the friend she had lost.

She had thought that if she married him, maybe she could show him that building a new world was possible, that eradicating corruption at once from a failing system could be better in the long run.

She had wanted to recover that feeling between them they had shared so briefly over the boat.

She had wanted to share her dreams with him, despite everything.

And he had killed her.

She wanted to weep.

She wanted to be in the water again.

But she felt fire, inside and out of her, flames and sounds of chanting destroying her little world.

The sky was caving in.

" Take him. You would regret leaving him here, if you go back."

Missandei pleaded, teaching to put the baby in her arms.

"I won't go, and I don't want him. I don't want anything. I won't love him"

She insisted, even with the persistent feeling she was lying, and rebelling some truth older than time.

The child wailed, like he knew he was being rejected.

Daenerys felt the fire inside her burning brighter, saw her surroundings to ripple like the edges of a dream.

She acted out of instinct, and reached for the baby, caught in a sort of unexpected terror he would fade away along with everything else.

Holding him tight against her chest made her to feel strange, sad and happy and scared, but warm and full too, in ways she was not before.

She had been silly.

The baby was not a stranger, climbing in her body to destroy her more.

He was innocent, small and hers.

A miracle she had not believed possible.

Still she was sadder for the sweetness that blossomed in her, because the baby was also half of Jon and half of *them*, those who had ruined her and everything she ever worked for.

Missandei smiled at her, her image blurring.

Daenerys almost reached for her too, wanting to freeze the moment , to grasp at last tendrils of this strange dream.

She held the baby tighter as she felt a new weakness cutting through her.

She felt like she was waning, her very body twisting out of shape.

And the baby... where was the baby?

—-

Daenerys Targaryen comes back to life with a chocked grasp, her body feeling at once too tight and too warm.

There's chanting around her, and the room is dark, full of candles.

She is lying on a stone surface, and there are many dressed in red around her.

Her heart aches, her skin is heated in ways that for once make her to mind the hot temperatures.

She longs for something out of her reach, something she can't name at first.

Her senses fight to make a sense of everything- she was with Jon, and then she was not.

He stabbed her to death- and that alone looks like it should be a trick of the mind.

He told her she was his queen, now and always.

Jon was good and honorable.

Why would he do that to her?

And then other images flood back, and she recalls the sheen of tears in his eyes as she faded away from him, and she knows somehow it is real, it really happened.

He gave her to Death.

And Death was sweet to her, maybe.

She recalls the touch of it like a kiss of seatide, the ease of dreams blending together and apart, and longing claws at her breast, powerful.

She could have been at home.

Instead she is in what looks like a temple of the Red God, with people she is not inclined to trust, who will surely will want something of her.

Who will be willing to discard her too, once they got it.

Too bad she is not up to giving anything anymore.

Has she even left anything to give?

Has she even a chance to regain back ... the throne ? Has her nephew seized it?

Daenerys sits upright, gestures to the priest advancing closer to stay back.

She breathes in, breathes out, blocks outside the fear, the sadness, the black despair that wants to pull her back down, inviting her to long for ease of resting, to miss the solace of nothingness.

She thinks of a child she is afraid to believe in.

She forces herself to remember who she is - not the brittle thing Westeros tried to turn her into, not her father's daughter, someone who falls apart after a measly betrayal to the hands of advisors that were always less than her, part of the wheel she meant to break.

She is The Mother of Dragons, The Unburnt.

When she falls, she rises stronger than she was before.

She rises and rises again.

She will have from the priest all information she can and then...

If there's no path for her to walk , she will make one.


	7. Chapter 7: Dragons Lost and Found

" How are your balls not rotting yet? "

" Just shut it , Tormund"

Jon sighs, tired if anything else of having the same old conversation every week, if not every few days.

" Val -"

" I won't hear a word about Val"

He spits, this time with more fire than the other man expects.

" But-"

Jon gets up, takes the bow and decides to go hunting, alone.

He does not spare his wildling friend a glance.

To say the truth, Tormund insistence all his problems might be resolved with fucking is more insulting than annoying.

It has been a year he is with the FreeFolk- but he thought he had made pretty clear from the get go he meant to keep true to one part of his vows. No wives of any kind, no children ( no lands, no crowns, no homes, no families).

He had left the Wall because he was sick of Westeros, Ill at the very idea he would end his days among black clad brothers, more of the unwanted and disgraced sons of the realm. He did not want to look at the evidence that things in the realm were not going to change.

But his penance? That he had accepted.

Tormund could think it was all very romantic, the idea he had wedded himself to his grief and remorse for Daenerys and that eventually he would allow another woman to soothe him. To give him a flock of sons and daughters to make him smile again. To make him happy.

Tormund can think like that because he has a simplicity of mind and soul and and a twisted sort of sentimentality but Jon ... knows far too well by now he is a very different kind of person.

Happiness looks to him as the natural outcome of being able of living according your beliefs, and he feels after what he has done he would be not able to live with himself, if he made of himself the kind of man who can do ... what he has done and reach for a free life regardless.

He does not want Val. All her persistent pursuit of him accomplishes is making him wary of her presence.

He does not want to want her or any other woman in their camp.

Once he liked to imagine a son to call Robb- now he finds a strange comfort in knowing no part of him will live on when he is gone, feels a sinister sweetness in knowing for certain there will be no more Targaryens.

Daenerys was always the true Last Dragon anyway - nor he nor Rhaegar could usurp that title when she wears it so well.

The most vivid picture his memory has of her is that last day, her straight back as she comes toward him and Drogon flies upward behind her, giving her for a moment the appearance of having a couple of wings herself.

She once told him Targaryens believed they would be transformed in dragons after they died. For her, he believes it actually possible.

He even prays for it some nights, when he can't sleep, and all he can hope for is that she is well, and free and magnificent and at peace in some other world.

Most of time he feels he has not much right of thinking of her, especially with love or admiration or any other feeling than remorse.

He killed her, he made it so her brilliant spark was extinguished from the world.

He made her last weeks to feel even worse in an already bleak situation, and deserted her when she was most in need of support.

If she was sick, he certainly did not lift a finger or speak a word to ensure she would receive any care.

Last month of their relationship was cold at the best.

No, he doesn't deserve to warm himself to the flame of her bright memory.

Still, it is how he can tell he truly loved her, in hindsight.

Now he can admit he was wrong about everything, that he looked for honor where there was none, that he was confused and adrift and left other people in charge of deciding how he felt and thought at the most critical time of his life.

There were days, those first rough months he could not accept the thing he had reduced himself to, or understand how he came to be here, he doubted everything.

He questioned whether he had ever loved his silver queen, if this was why he had allowed himself to be swayed so easily.

Then he would remember Ygritte - the way she made him to feel, she who was so brazen and unapologetic and certain about her place in the world in years he was struggling to make his own.

Ygritte taught him of courage, of what it was being truly alive. When she died he swore himself he would never love anyone the way he loved her, than it was impossible to love someone more.

Yet he had chosen honor over her too- he had determined to leave her behind, never truly even contemplated changing his life plans around that first young love. He had not killed her but he had not acted to preserve her life neither.

And today he lives among the wildlings himself he can tell maybe back to then he thought he was somewhat above Ygritte, for his upbringing, for his goals, his attachment to duty.

With Daenerys he had felt a bit of the opposite, at least at first.

She was this incredible gorgeous creature who was strong and willful and good, with a temper and an idealism that matched his. Every inch a queen, a pillar of granitic strength.

He thought himself miraculously lucky that somehow she too seemed to see in him something worth of her interest, desire, love.

Even now he cannot contemplate how or when he lost that feeling.

They had something so pure at first, it was still strange to think how fast it had collapsed.

And it was unreal to think he had plunged a knife in her heart. Because she had frightened him with that talk of more wars, and the unapologetic iciness in her eyes at all that blood on her hands.

He made himself her judge, and then he had murdered her, leveraging her trust in him.

Well, now he could judge himself too because he had nothing but time to think over his actions.

All he had set out to do was to prove his birth did not define his lack of value ... all he discovered in pursuit of honor was that you did not need to be a bastard to act like one.

Not a nice picture , is it ?

Jon wishes he could pinpoint the exact moment he lost the man he wanted to be. It had to be before he killed her.

Was it when Sam told him about his true parents? Had it really taken so little to shake his sense of self, to turn him into a weakling?

Once more it does not feel possible, yet it has to be true, because Jon has no other explanation for the way he acted.

Or maybe he was always this way, and he never noticed until the truth of hard facts dissolved that shield he had hidden behind.

Is he a cold man after all, who cares more for faceless strangers and ethical principles than he does for women he claimed to care for?

If Sansa or Arya did something unforgivable, would he turn against them too, just as easily?

Is this the sort of man he is?

He no longer thinks he knows much about love.

When you love someone, if it is a feeling good and true and authentic, does that mean you should put them first , their care above the care you have for yourself and the things you want for your life?

Should not Daenerys or Ygritte have mattered more to him , if he truly loved them? More than this idea of doing the right thing at all costs?

There is a line somewhere he cannot see?

There's something lacking in him, if he was more worried with his moral judgment of Daenerys than of her well being, those days she must have had a need of someone?

What is the point of loving anyway, if it can be swept aside so easily, if it fails right when it should endure?

What is the point of honor if it turns you into a bad man? Or is it the truth that he is so far gone he cannot tell the honorable thing from the dishonorable one until after he has done the deed?

He will not trust himself ever again to tell the difference, but he wishes he had never extinguished Daenerys fire from the world, that he had followed his heart.

That he had given more to her, if their days were to be numbered.

Then he might have the consolation of remembering the good times among the bad ones and perhaps feel entitled to mourn her.

Instead he has nothing left but the awareness he failed her and himself in every way possible.

She did deserve better, no matter what she might have done or how he might have felt about it. He wishes he could have been the sort of man who gave her better.

But wishes are dead horses riding you nowhere, and penance is all he has left.

Funny, how the more people insist to give him a free pass the more he feels like carrying the weight of what he has done for the rest of his life is the one way he can even aspire to redeem himself.

So yes, he can actually tell with absolute certainty he is * never * going to want Val and the brood of imaginary wildling children.

He does not want to ever, even imagine this exile as a life he might enjoy.

He wants to be left alone and free to end his days brooding, remorseful, dancing to the idea at least he had not sunk so low to build an happy life over murder.

It is bad enough to know Arya and Sansa did want him free, walking out of this tragedy as immaculate as actual snow.

Like the Starks became the new Lannisters, just as corrupt but with a coating of hypocrisy on top.

He has already lost everything he has ever cared to hold. Why would he want to lose even more?


	8. Chapter 8: The Slumbering Dragon

At times when Daenerys wakes up, she wakes up angry.

Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Varys.

Sansa Stark. Arya Stark.

She sees their faces so vividly even with her eyes still closed, like she just left a dream they inhabited, even if her memory is a dark, blank room of night terrors and fury.

Those days she will carry the anger with her, breath in, breath out, through her whole daily routine.

It is easy, when everything in the temple makes her to feel like all her triumphs and the battles were washed away.

The clergy and the devotees are respectful and at times reverent of her, of course. They call her Queen, hero, bride of fire.

She is fed, assigned guards of the Fiery Hand, led through rituals to cloak her existence from the new usurper, the three eyed raven.

She is given fine dresses in Targaryen black and red, jewels that they swear are drenched in protective and healing magic.

She receives the visits of initiates that want to fill her with questions about what she remembers of the ' other side' and discuss eagerly holy scriptures with her.

Kinvara, who has the benefit of being an exceptionally intelligent, charismatic and perceptive woman with a steadying firmness of character, says it is a good sign she remembers. That only the pure can return from the death and still withholding some shadow of what lies behind.

That she is favored in the light of their Lord.

Daenerys listens, even accepts a few invitations to witness the rites, allows herself to be educated while she waits for Greyworm, who was warned of her resurrection through shadow magic, so her survival can be kept a secret until she is protected again.

After her sad experience with Jon, she dares not to contact Daario when she is so vulnerable.

She cut her hair, honoring the Dothraki custom, to remind herself of how far she fell.

She was so close to have her whole life work completed and now... she is back to exile, to relying on the protection of strangers, to start over from nearly the scratch.

She has heard Daario had put down an uprising from a few slavers families as soon as the rumour of her assassination spread. That even now the Targaryen banners stand over Dragons Bay.

Daenerys wonders if the people who called her mhysa cried for her, or have already forgot her.

If public favour is not fickle only among the Westerosi.

She has asked her guards to teach her to fight, despite her condition.

The vulnerability of her unarmed body scares her now- she wants never again to be so defenseless that a man needs only to get close enough to kill her.

Still, the Fiery Hand warrior discipline is of a brand that allows not to separate the spiritual practice from the physical, and her pregnancy is not something she can risk with strenuous labour.

So she is tasked with meditating in a room full of perfumed smoke, most of time, to train her senses to open and discern her surroundings in the fine nuances of sound.

She is taught to scry flames for answers, to make herbal oils by boiling recipes to protect the body and tinctures to poisoner knives.

She is taught to hide small blades in her clothing, to aim at a target with sure hand from varying distances to aim to knees and joints when sparring to make the opponent to fall down before disarming him.

A great part of the Fiery Hand fighting technique seems to be based on anticipating enemy moves and find the right angle to break knees or ankles so your opponent will be forced to the ground and made vulnerable to kill or disarm.

She is somewhat abysmal at everything for now, but she likes to keep her body and mind busy.

It keeps the memories away, and the grief for her fallen from filling her heart.

When she is not angry, she is sad nowadays, a melancholy so deep and unshakable it would will her to sleep the morning, the evening, the whole day away, if she was not to fill her schedule with things to do to the brim.

At times when she thinks of her child she feels a distrust she can't quell, and at times she feels only the anticipation to meet him, to hold him, to love him.

Finally she is going to have a piece of family, a heir, to call all hers.

It feels nearly too good to be true, in the middle of all this ruination and yet... last time she thought something too good to be true, with his father, it had turned into a nightmare so quickly.

She instinctively recoils at the idea of living through something like that again, but then the sensible part of her speaks out, reminds her it is only a child, innocent, her blood, who will depend on her for love and safety.

It is hard too, to think this pregnancy was paid for with Viserion's blood.

It makes her to feel guilty at the elation she feels at night, when her fingers will trace the curve of her stomach in wonder, and rest there as if she hopes the child can feel her too and reach back.

And then there's her living nightmares, the flashbacks she will occasionally get through the day of herself on dragonback, spurring on Drogon as he chases gaunt, dirty women and children through narrow and filthy alleys.

She feels awful about that now, even if anger was all she had place for at the time.

She wanted vengeance, had not felt like the surrender was enough, was deserved relief. Not after Missandei.

She had wanted to see that cursed city and everyone in it to disappear to dust and ash, and this was exactly what she had pursued.

And what about the peace she had felt afterwards?

She is not sure how she can reconcile with herself what she felt and the image of children burning.

It feels like there should be a divide there, like she should have not found any satisfaction so soon after that sort of price was paid.

But King Landing and Westeros in general has made nothing to make her to feel like those people were her people, and that abrupt divide in the end had proved fatal.

She had seen only enemies to destroy, where Tyrion and Jon had seen countrymen and countrywomen, lives to be spared as much as it was possible.

And maybe this should be telling her something, is it?

While she still blames those two for their treachery and hypocritical rationales, she has to admit that divide lingers in her heart even now.

Westeros is a pit of corruption she had planned to cleanse throughly, but she feels such a revulsion to the concept of ever returning there again. Truly, even when she had thought she had won the throne her first thought was for Essos.

To use the Westerosi militia to take the free cities, to end slavery everywhere.

Her vision for the future had returned to her, for the first time from her nothern experience, and that alone had calmed her.

If only the fantasy of setting foot again in Essos had made her to feel like home was a breath away, maybe she never should have left.

That thought too, came with too heavy remorses - so many of those close to her had lost their lives for the restoration of her legacy, and it was all for nothing, it was maybe something it should never have happened at all.

When she is most full of doubt, Drogon is her greatest consolation.

He flies never too far away from Volantis now, like he fears she might be snatched away if he does not check on her often enough.

Their bond is stronger than has ever been, and he seeks her affection and petting like he did not since he was small and new to the world.

She wants to ride him again, fly with him over the open sea, feel the closeness of him having the space to call her palace his home.

She feels the love between them like a tether, constant and strong and pure and fierce, grounding her down in her misery, melting away the shades of her fear for the future.

They made it through disaster together. He saved her from final death bringing her here, guarded her body - his loyalty alone brought this miracle forth, and she is is humbled, grateful.

The priesthood of the Red God might be devoted to her for their own beliefs, but Drogon's only reason was filial, enduring, stubborn love.

He alone did not fail her, of those who were with her before.

They grieve his brothers together, when she kisses his huge muzzle and cuddles against his scales in the evening hours, their minds so attuned her remembrance and his own move so in synch she can't tell who started them down the memory lane.

That moment of clarity after her taking of King's Landing, the sensation of purpose settling over her like a protective cloak... the solidity of having her future open and bright before her... she wants them back.

Now all there is uncertainty.

She forces herself to have patience, and hope.

Greyworm is going to rally her blood riders, and come back to her.

She is going to have her child.

Someday she and Drogon will live in a new castle, and she will have the throne room open on a side so he can curl up beside her if he wants , near the throne while she holds court. Her throne won't be made of swords, and she will have gardens full of lemon trees to walk beneath.

She will fly with her son when he is old enough, and she will have a bunch of stories to tell him about the which she does not need to be ashamed over.

He will love her back, and she won't think of his father as she holds him.

She will forget Jon Snow, who turned to be weak when she needed him , believed him to be strong.

She will forget Varys and Tyrion, who spoke big speeches but were in the end small men, reaching only for a puppet ruler they might control.

She will obliterate the memory of the Stark sisters, whom she does not even believe intelligent enough to realize it was wrong and foolish to use her armies and demand to give nothing in exchange, to her own face.

She won't leave those days she allowed her saddened soul to forget its pride to haunt her forever.

She will make strength out the ashes of this treachery and a brighter beginning from this ending.

She will prove herself to be stronger than *them*.

She won't feel so sad or so angry forever, and the fear that lives in some corner of her mind, she will vanquish somehow.

If she has made mistakes, she won't languish over them. She will atone instead, and for every child she has burned she will deliver a better future to a thousand children.

She will forge herself into a good mother and a better queen.

She is not the same woman who left Essos but there are also parts of herself she did not knew herself before.

Before, she was so focused on building peace, redeeming her house, restoring it, proving herself to her people, to her allies.

She wanted their respect and that stopped her hand at times when if she had not listened, she would have secured important victories.

Today she knows those who truly understood and supported what she stood for never had any need of persuading.

Today she knows herself to be a thing of destruction, turned to an higher calling. She understands with an entirely new clarity that her idealism has a dark side: there are lives she won't ever consider worthy being, much less sparing.

Her willingness to do what it takes to reach a new world can be her strength or her downfall, and that will depend partly on how wisely she picks her court, and partly on how well she will know to balance out the scales with compassion and benevolence.

Robert Baratheon 's indulgences bred corruption, the cruelty and selfishness of the Lannister regime allowed it to fester.

Her one moment of lacking empathy resulted in mostly purposeless genocide.

Those are all points where she can guard herself from falling on the same sword, in the future.

She does not fear this new usurper- Stark dutifulness and near omniscience are going to be almost necessarily a poor substitute for a genuine vision of the future, or a sincere vocation toward ruling.

It reassures Daenerys that she still feels those things within herself, despite everything.

THIS is because she thought she was going to be a great queen, when she was given the chance.

Not because of her lineage or dragons, but because she had this love within her for a world that did not yet exist, a world she wanted to bring forth. Jon and Tyrion had not taken that from her.

She can see it more clearly than ever.

She used to think Jon was like her, because she had seen his struggles to always do good by his people, his rigid and uncompromising attachment to duty and honor, so apparent when he had refused to lie even to Cersei when they needed.

But that rigidity, in hindsight, had turned into exactly the reason he had failed to understand her.

He has to have looked at her and seen only someone as power hungry as those conniving beasts of the south ( so like his sister Sansa, amusingly enough, a fact he was willingly and enduringly blind to) in those last weeks after she asked to keep his silence over the truth of his birth.

He could have worn a crown with some grace, and did what he thought he was right by the realm, but in the end he lacked the interest and the passion to understand the intricacies of ruling, and handling the power of it.

It occurs her now she has never truly known what he truly wanted out of life, outside of his propensity to allow responsibility to determinate its course.

Their romance had flared powerfully and passionately to life during that boat voyage, and she had felt caught in that beautiful sensation of finding finally a match where she was equal to her partner on near every level. She had seen in him a man who was good, and treated her with the utmost respect as queen and as woman without fearing to challenge her when it was necessary.

She had thought of the world of his integrity, considered him so uncompromisingly honest to be above betrayal and perceived what was blossoming between like a rare flower, pure and untainted.

The world had looked like a better place because he was in it.

But as soon as he set foot to his frozen homeland, most of the qualities and the closeness she had so valued faded like some fanciful illusion.

He seemed indifferent to his own sisters or friends slighting her openly, and so worried with keeping the favor of his own people and family he was careless or indulgent.

He dismissed her concerns, verbally slapped her with the revelation of his birth parents at the less opportune moment and acted with utmost indifference to what that secret meant to her identity and dreams of the future.

Her pride had demanded she did not show any care for his own feelings over the matter in return.

Maybe in another life she would have enjoyed sitting with him in her chambers by the fire, making him to share in the history of their house and inspire some belonging in him.

She would have liked to not be last Targaryen, found some comfort in the idea he could have children at least, and their house did not need to die.

Instead her heart had rebelled the very idea he would snoop in and take everything that was hers- marry another, give her Targaryen children to sit on the throne she had sacrificed so much for.

She had looked down on how dismissive he was of the whole thing and thought he did not deserved the claim or the bloodline.

Maybe if she had set the pride and the anxiety aside and forced him into one honest conversation over the matter, things would have turned differently.

The Jon she thought she knew would have not... told her he would keep the secret just to break his promise as soon he could - she thought he would have either refuse to promise anything of the sort or kept his mouth shut after he had promised.

He would have not put a blade in her heart neither, after telling her he was loyal.

Or... had she seen in him only a reflection of something she wanted?

Was he so fickle or two faced he could be two men if occasion presented itself?

Or maybe in truth she had never known him for real , and the honorless hypocrite who had stabbed her was his true self.

Well, he gave her a child, if anything else.

Daenerys wanted to think she could move past it all because of that alone.

She had a child she never thought she could have, and she had to focus on the fact without Jon Snow and the war against the dead she would have lived without that particular blessing.

Jon Snow would apparently live out his days at the wall, and if the gods were good she would have no reason to see him again.

She could let go the dream of him like a price she had to pay to get here, even if she would have preferred do without the renewed usurpation of her throne or the assassination.

The only path was forward, and the past held no definitive answers, only more questions.

If I look back, I am lost - she thought with a certain irony.

The trick was, as always , to keep moving.


	9. Chapter 9: Embers in the ash

**Chapter 10****: Embers In The Ash**

**Summary**: _Daeron is born and Daenerys lives and learns._

—-

Daeron Targaryen is born in the right middle of black moon night, a most auspicious time that will gain him at once the moniker of 'prince of shadows'.

To Daenerys, who was awoken by birthing pains and suffered six hours straight to bring him into the world, it is said that he proved himself to have a fine and healthy pair of lungs from the moment was washed to the moment he was given back to his exhausted mother arms.

Of those first hours with him, she will remember ever only the overwhelming relief to be able to have a living child- red faced and animated, a little face twisting fiercely in discontent, an hungry mouth latching at her breast with hunger.

She will remember being awed at the miracle of life, at the magic of a little being that lived inside her body for nine months and now is so real, so perfect with his tiny lashes and little fists, wrapped in linens, warm and breathing and moving against her body.

Her son, finally.

He has her heart completely the moment his eyes- a dark purple- meet hers in a resemblance of a scowl.

She has the strangest sense her whole world is ending and coming together at once. She has a son.

For a precious moment nothing else matters , and all she wants is to be worthy of being a mother, to be able to care and protect him the best of ways.

She tries to stay awake as long as she can just to look at him, to take in everything , every detail of his first day in the world, but her body is weak and she has to ask for her baby to be taken away, she is too afraid to drop him , or to hurt him.

—

The first days are nearly perfect, if not for the first bouts of that assail her.

Daenerys can hold her Daeron and feel everything is perfect.

He is her joy, her home, her life.

She is constantly pulled apart from wishing she could have him always like this, tiny and flawless and safe, gurgling happy in her arms, and the looking forward watching him to become a man and do all sorts of amazing things.

She feel complete and at peace when she is tending to him.

Her past is only a shadow, her future nearly irrelevant, as long as they are all together, she and Daeron and Drogon, a family at last, unconventional but true and hers.

It is enough, she knows suddenly at the core of her, even if this turns to be all she can ever have - a life as a ' refugee' to the temple, an eternal exile to Westeros, a simple existence of days stretching into each other where she is only a mother.

But then her eyes turn away from her living children, and she remembers all the weight of her name, of her legacy.

All her desires and ambitions are still part of her.

She is still a woman in a world that seems determined to kick women into a place of submission and non-existence. Whores, wives, mistresses, slaves- the difference is not as marked as it might seem.

They are still seemingly all coerced to fight thooth and nail for a space where they can be a person, where they are not hostages to men who feel usurped by their autonomy.

They did not see that before Westeros. As a queen, she had felt secure in what she had conquered. Her titles, her armies, her allies, the raw truth of her own self.

Varys and Tyrion had their games of shadows upon walls, and she had her terrible strength and the uncompromising purity of her own idealism, that were as much her power source as her dragons.

She never considered people could just choose to ... deny her, let their shadows to play upon her and cast her in a role that was not hers. She never dreamt those games could push her to the brink. Yet it haunts her, the memory of her time in the North, of being pushed in a corner, slowly being made powerless while others pulled the strings of her ruin.

She still did not understand how it happened.

And if she does not understand the past, is she not doomed to repeat it?

She has not much in the way of allies or support to leave to her son.

If she falls, he will be left with no guarantee of a future.

So more now than ever in her life , she needs to not fail. It is everything or nothing.

She is afraid of everything nowadays. Greyworm still has to come back to her, and her complete dependence on the temple unnerves her, brings her too often to memories of her childhood, of Illyrio 's hospitality and what followed. Birth made her body weak and her moods volatile. There's a fragility that haunts her, makes her brittle to nightmares of Jon's eyes and a pain that tears her ribcage in two, the ghost sensation of chocking on her own blood. It was terrible, that betrayal, but truly it was only the epilogue to a long, miserable fall that started with the fight against the dead.

It is no longer the monsters that stole Viserion that fill her with horror when she closes her eyes. It is the living, the certainty they can make the world full of ugliness and danger so much more than literal walking Death.

It is the thought she might kill them all until Westeros is a graveyard and her kingdom takes shape from ashes, the yearning to be Mhysa to her people once more... to have her own people, the children of her new world, where women are more than facilities for pleasure or breeding, and people cannot be made into things. Where life has its own dignity, and death has its purpose to defend that.

That dream has always burned in her, but never so brightly, so powerfully.

She sees so clearly its necessity now- she died because those closest to her were too much of a part of the old system to break away. Tyrion who proved himself a Lannister to the end, Varys who built his luck upon using other people power by manipulating them, even Jon who was molded in the struggle of proving a bastard could have honor and worth.

But then, she could swear she was different before. She thought she would never go so far to cast away mercy.

Instead she found out that once she was pushed to the brink and all she had was the blunt force, there were lives she could take without regret. The lives of the ones she did not respect or value.

She used to think her new world would come about by the way of high ideals and compassion. In Essos, a land where blunt force ruled, that had made a powerful counterbalance to her occasional ruthlessness.

In Westeros, a land where hypocrites were used to hide their true intent to get what they wanted and misconstrue truths as it suited them, it seemed the one alternative to be a puppet ruler for one's council was to be an all out tyrant.

Westeros was corrupt to the bone... even now they had supposedly created a new ruling system, they chose to follow a king that had no interest or ambition in government and they named him 'the broken' as if the most important part of him was the fact he could not walk. The fact he was physically harmless, in appeareance.

Bran Stark, for whatever reason, allowed it.

Daenerys thinks of taking back what is hers, in fire and blood.

Of burning every Stark until her son is all is left of their house.

Her rage at being reduced back to the exile feels limitless, a river ready to overflow at any given time.

But then she holds Daeron, who starts looking more and more like a blend of Stark and Targaryen features and she doubts everything.

The shape of his face is much like hers- he has her exact forehead and chin, but the nose is all Jon.

His eyes are nearly indigo, but the cut of them was much like the oval , worlfish shape she recalls seeing on lady Lyanna 's statue face.

His cheekbones have all the promise of Stark sharpness.

Bad enough she will never trust Jon again, and her son will never able to have a father. She is not stupid enough to not predict that Arya Stark alone would be more than capable , if she knew of his existence, to kill her and take her child to her brother, probably thinking herself some noble heroine while she was at it.

The other Starks... well, she could expect more of the same variation on theme. The day they knew she lived, they would surely move to put her back into a grave, and if they ever decided to spare the child on the account of his Stark blood, they would plan to have him raised away from her influence.

She could never afford to have that possibility to manifest.

More than anything she wanted to raise her son away from war and away from the Starks. But unless she gained back her place, they both had nothing. Everything in her recoils at the thought of wandering with her child from city to city like she had with Viserys after Darry died.

The despair that claws through her soul those days can only be soothed by prayer.

She does not pray to Rlhorr tough. She prays to her dead through the flames, to Missandei, to Jorah, to her mother, even Darry and Ser Barristan. To Viserion and To Rhaegal.

She prays that they could reach through and lend their strength, their counsel.

The focus required for scrying the flames calms her, if anything else, and there were a few scant episodes where she could feel a whisper of scales against skin, Rhaegal soft hissing, Viserion's humming song.

She would pin it to her imagination if not for the feeling of power that lingers in her soul afterwards, the quiet sustaining strength of her children carrying her in a flight that is not physical but it is just as real, beyond her fear, her pain, her anxiety for the future.

There's a sadness in her that lingers, calls her to contemplate the peace she found in death. She tries to not listen, to not sink back into the deep fascination she felt during her pregnancy, when the possibility the birthing bed would prove her last undoing did not seem so terrible.

There is much she has and wants to do before finally giving herself to a final rest.

She wants to know Daeron has a secured future, her dreams a true fruition .

She wants to feel more happiness at watching him to grow, collect memories of them as a happy family of two.

She wants to know she will be never helpless again, that nobody will be ever able to strip her name and essence from her.

She wants a whole palace with red doors and private gardens with lemon trees where she can play with her boy. Safety, stability, a life she can enjoy full of all those blessings she has never known.

Magic and power and understanding of the unseen so she will never be weak and taken by surprise again.

Drogon always there with her and Daeron, every step of the way, because he will be always her first child.

There's enough wants to keep her going, but some mornings, before she can actively choose them, to number them, to make herself strong against temptation...

Death is a siren that whispers of sweet nothings and consuming sleepiness, an hazy reminder of uncomplicated hours that would become endless, limitless.

The end of fatigue, worry, fear.

The promise she could easily choose to not concern herself with growing old and lonely in a land where she is always only a stranger.

She has nightmares of Daeron growing up and hating her, leaving all alone, reneging her as a mother, stabbing her in the heart like his father, speaking to her in the voices of Sansa or Arya Stark , with disdain and coldness.

She always cries when she wakes from that sort of nightmare, feels a pain greater and deeper than anything she has ever known.

It is terrible, to have a child and love him so much he could destroy you without as much as trying and yet to realize you might never wish any sort of harm upon him, not even to defend yourself.

To know beyond certainty you can never harden your heart against such a weakness, because he is everything and his safety matters to you more than yours.

She thinks of Jon those moments, of how she did not feel alone for a first in her whole life, how she never imaged she could feel so intimate with someone she had barely met, of the fire between them that did not feel like it could ever be extinguished. She thinks of how easily it all turned in a bizarre , reverse contrary- of how alone she felt toward the end, of how she let that aloneness to make her to forget who she was .

Before, she longed for love. How she considers she is not sure she can afford it.

She has her son. His birth already absorbed so much of her desires , of her very capacity for feeling, like every dream and consideration of herself she ever had suddenly were squashed in some secondary corner. She loves him so much he has always to come first.

It is somewhat tragic all of this makes her to realize nobody has ever felt like that toward her. She never felt like it, anyway.

And it is all right, finally.

If anything her fortune taught her that what matters to her is to have a purpose, to give her life a meaning without having her cause to be transformed into a ruse by those who would use her.

She can handle whatever is thrown to her as long as she remains true to her self.

And a child of her womb - is something pure she had stopped hoping she could have.

It is not enough to be driven by the future - she has always to remember to be grateful for what she has in the present.

She has to learn to look back without flinching- no longer a rootless girl, but a queen that built her fortress in herself by trial and error. A woman who owns herself, who no longer depends on others to build her up or down, who is not frightened to remember her downfalls.

She is both the Breaker Of Chains and The Queen Of Ashes, the daughter of gentle Rhaella and mad Aerys. She may have inherited scraps of both of them, like her Daeron will inherit from both her and Jon, but she still hopes to make the best of it.

To be her own person, no longer defined by the shadows of her forefathers.

She will never be the woman she was before heading North, but day by day breathing is becoming a bit easier, getting up from bed in the morning is less of a struggle with the voices in her head and more of an automatic mechanism- to put one foot before the other and go through the motions of living.

She still aches under the ashes of her old life, her old dreams, her old self but she can now see there will be another life ahead her, and so much is yet possible.

She is not missing a day of training with the men of the Fiery Hand, and the mental discipline is starting to give its first fruits.

She is starting to have some intuitive grasp on the magic of fire, if anything else- there's something in it that she senses so alike to the most intimate roots of her whole being. Fire is Will, Strenght, Passion, Life unextinguished and unextinguishing, and yet a bringer of death, pain, and truth. Its nature is dual, vexing, as deceptive as it is honest and forthright- it is believed that fire tempers but tests you as well, and those who are able to look into it with no vanities and no self deception will be able to contemplate the mysteries of the world with as much transparency as the purity in their souls, but those who behold it with the smallest impurities inside will be driven to death and ruin with furious haste.

Daenerys pours her late night hours over old tomes looking for the reason she doesn't burn. They call her Bride Of Fire in the temple, because of it, and it is like they are convinced it means something. They call her the Destroyer Of Corruption for the blaze she set on Kings Landing, look at her with awestruck eyes when she is not looking. Like their god molded her for some special purpose she won't reveal, and she does not trust it but she has to take that awe and work with it, given the circumstances.

She wears her titles with the renewed conviction of someone who is studying the magic of names, their power to shape destinies.

She is determined that when Daeron is named in the light of Rhllor, she will give him titles to make him strong in this difficult life that opens before them. Just like her mother made her strong with her last breath.

She is going always be Stormborn first and foremost, after all, and when this storm too has passed, who can tell who and what she will be ?

—-

AN:

this story is being frequently and regularly posted at AO3 as i find the posting format there to be way easier on my nerves.

Feel Free to follow us at: /works/18937471/chapters/47589214


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